Ideas are mysterious things. Sometimes the worst ones smell like solid gold, sometimes the profit-driving powerhouses masquerade as giant turds. Telling the difference, it seems, takes a certain measure of psychotic genius. Where, for example, is the hazy boundary of brilliance that separates the Slinky from, say, Picnic Pants? Maybe I just have no vision,…
Read MoreUI vs. Loneliness: Barrage Video (弹幕) and China’s “Empty Nest Youth”
The Mobike Experience: a Deep Dive into the new IoT App Sweeping Beijing
Distances in Beijing are awkward, irregular beasts. The city blocks, for one thing, are ginormous, clocking in at about 10 hectares a pop. Can’t really picture the size of a hectare? Yeah, me neither. But there is this: in Buildings, Culture and Environment: Informing Global Practices, Raymond J. Cole and Richard Lorch write: “A typical…
Read MoreXian Yu App – 闲鱼 – China’s Emerging Second-Hand Market
It wasn’t long ago that second-hand was a no-go zone for retail in China. There’s no glory in a gently-used trampoline, and a light film of shame still taints second-hand purchases. But that, like every other damn thing, may be ripe for revaluation. In an April 2016 piece exploring China’s changing attitudes towards buying second-hand,…
Read MoreMitigating Mistrust in Chinese eCommerce: Visual Indicators of Trustworthiness on B2C Platforms
Hoo! You remember back in 2005 when this was true? “The research findings show that consumer privacy protection, security control measurements, brand and size of the companies are most important factors, while consumer’s characteristics and perceived easiness of using the Web site that have no significant influences on consumer trust.” (The influenced factors to online…
Read MoreChinese New Year by the Numbers: Wechat + Spring Festival Infographic 2016
The numbers are counted, the 汤圆 are eaten, and Spring Festival 2016 is officially wrapped. WeChat released an overview of Chinese New Years user stats, and Chinese branding blog Pingwest (who recently launched their own UI makeover) was all over that hot data pile with a digestible infographic. I’m translating Pingwest’s original post, with a…
Read MoreA Stroll Through China’s Most-used Desktop Login Forms
I presume you’ve used a login form before (no? Hail, and welcome to Earth. We have tacos). And I presume you’re familiar with the basics: you speak “friend” and enter. But China’s login processes, driven by environmental and behavioral factors, are perhaps a little different than what you’re used to. “Factors”, you say? I can’t…
Read MoreEight Conclusions from Tencent’s Mobile User Behavior Report
Hey nerd faces, Tencent’s game design and creative team TGideas just released a cool light-app based report outlining eight conclusions from mobile behavior data aggregation and testing. I’m gonna translate here, but if you’re a WeChat user and you’d like to run through this on your phone, do this Chinese-style and scan the QR code…
Read MoreExamining Chinese UI for the Travel Industry: What’s Different?
Dorking around on travel sites is my weird little self-soothing, time-wasting extravagance. I don’t know what’s so exciting about plane ticket listings, I just like them. I like them in the way I like cheesecake and Pearl Jam. I once wrote gushing fanmail to Adioso because I thought their human-centered approach to ticket search was…
Read MoreChinese App Icons: Senior Designers Share Their Thinking
Man, you rarely see stuff like this on the Chinese net: interesting dive into design thinking as Chinese branding blog Pingwest interviews the designers of three major Chinese character-based app icons. The post splits app icon designs into two categories, those that use a Chinese character to represent the app (Taobao’s 淘, Facebook’s lowercase f),…
Read MoreChinese User Interface Trends in 2015: Onboarding with Overlays and Arrows
We like to think that every decision made by giant conglomerates is backed by years of research and considered decision-making, but if you’ve ever gotten close to a multi-national company, you’ll know that’s rarely the way it works. Lift a corner of most rugs and you’ll find a sick tangle of legacy procedures, insane process…
Read MoreProof of Concept: Are Chinese App Interface Colors Really Brighter?
Sometimes you have one of those conversations that’s so full of new ideas, it pinballs around your head for days. I enjoyed one of those recently while interviewing a source at a Beijing-based mobile game localization company, a man responsible for reviewing non-Chinese mobile games and assessing whether or not they’re a good fit for…
Read MoreEast Asian Cultural Perception in UX / Interface Design
Picture a timeline. Like those timelines you used to draw in history class, from the Battle of Hastings to present. How is it oriented? Like many westerners, the past is probably off to your left somewhere. The present is in front of you, and the future extends to your right. Yeah, mine looks like that,…
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